The Story Of Cain and AbelThe Qur’an does not mention the names of these “two sons of Adam,” though commentators call them Qabil and Habil. But we find in Surah V., Al Maidah, 30-35, the following account of them.

“Recite unto them truly the narrative of Adam’s two sons, when they both offered sacrifice: then it was accepted from one of them, and from the other it was not accepted. [The latter] said, ‘Verily I shall assuredly slay thee.’ [The other] said, ‘Truly God accepteth from the pious. Verily if thou stretch forth thine hand upon me to slay me, I shall not stretch forth mine hand upon thee to slay thee: indeed I fear God, the Lord of the worlds. I indeed choose rather that thou~ shouldst bear my sin and thine own sin, then shalt thou be of the companions of the Fire, and that is the recompense of the unjust.’ Then his soul permitted to him [Cain] the murder of his brother: accordingly he slew him: thus he became one of the lost. Then God sent a raven, which scratcheth in the ground, that it might show him how to hide his brother’s corpse. He said, ‘Ah! woe unto me! cannot I be as this raven and hide my brother’s corpse?’ Then did he become one of the penitent. On that account have We written for the Children of Israel that whoso slayeth a soul, except for a life or for evildoing in the land, then truly shall it be as though he had slain all men; and whoso saveth it alive, then truly it shall be as though he had saved all men alive.”

A conversation, or rather argument, between Cain and Abel is mentioned in Jewish legend both in the Targum of Jonathan 14 and in the Targum of Jerusalem. Cain, we are told, said, “There is no punishment for sin, nor is there any reward for good conduct.” In reply to this, Abel asserted that good was rewarded by God and evil punished. Angered at this, Cain took up a stone and with it smote his brother and slew him. The resemblance between this narrative and that given in the beginning of the foregoing quotation from the Qur’an is not striking. But the source of the rest of the Qur’anic account of the murder is the legend related in the Pirqey Rabbi Eli’ezer, chapter xxi, which may be thus rendered:-

“Adam and his helpmeet were sitting weeping and lamenting over him (Abel), and they did not know what to do with Abel, for they were not acquainted with burial. A raven, one of whose companions had died, came. He took him and dug in the earth and buried him before their eyes Adam said, ‘I shall do as this raven. Immediately (lit. out of hand) “he took Abel’s corpse and dug in the earth and buried it.” When we compare the Jewish legend with the one given in the Qur’an, we see that the only difference is that in the former the raven taught Adam how to bury the body, whereas in the Qur’an it is Cain who is said to have been thus taught. It is clear also that the passage in the Qur’an is not a literal translation from one or more Jewish books, but is rather, as we might expect, a free reproduction of the story as told to Muhammad by some of his Jewish friends, of whom early Arabian accounts mention the names 15 of Several. This explains the mistake that the Qur’an makes in attributing the burial to Cain instead of to Adam. We shall notice similar phenomena throughout the whole series of these excerpts. It is hardly probable that these slight divergences were purposely made by Muhammad, though it is quite possible that the Jews who related the legends to him had learnt them orally themselves, and that they and not the Arabian prophet made the mistake. That is a matter of small moment. What is certain is that we can here, and in very many other instances, trace the account which Muhammad gives to earlier Jewish written sources.

What is recorded in the thirty-fifth verse of the Surah quoted above seems to have no immediate relation to the preceding part of the passage. A link is evidently missing If, however, we turn to Mishnah Sanhedrin (chapter iv. § 5), we find the whole matter fully stated, so that the connexion which exists between the verse above mentioned and the narrative of the murder of Abel becomes clear. For the Jewish commentator, in commenting on the words which the Pentateuch tells us God spoke to Cain, “What 16 hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me front the ground;’ – in which passage the word blood is in the plural in Hebrew because it denotes blood shed by violence, – writes thus “Concerning Cain who slew his brother, we have found that it is said concerning him, ‘The voice of thy brother’s bloods crieth.’ He saith not, ‘Thy brother’s blood‘ but ‘Thy brother’s bloods’,- his blood and the blood of his descendants. On this account was Adam created alone, to teach thee that everyone who destroyeth one soul out of Israel, the Scripture reckoneth it unto him as if he had destroyed the whole world; and everyone who preserveth alive one soul out of Israel, the Scripture reckoneth it unto him as if he had preserved alive the whole world.” We are not concerned with the correctness or otherwise of this fanciful exposition of the sacred text, but it is of importance to notice that the thirty-fifth verse or Surah Al Maidah is an almost literal translation of part of this extract. The former part of the passage as it stands in the Mishnah is omitted in the Qur’an, possibly because it was not fully understood by Muhammad or his informant. But when it is supplied, the connexion between verse thirty-five and the preceding verses becomes clear 17,